AMERICA’S RIVER SYSTEM ARTIFICIALLY DEVELOPED. 507 
adjacent to the St. Lawrence, and these in turn have streams flowing into them 
which could be easily made a connecting link between the river which is the 
pride of New York and that greater one which carries the waters of our vast 
inland seas through British territory to the Atlantic Ocean. 
Coming to Pennsylvania, we find a vast field for the exercise of that theoreti- 
cal river improvement which may one day become a fact. The Delaware and 
Schuylkill could be utilized to a far greater extent than at present, though they 
could not be transformed into important connecting links with other waters, as 
some of their sister rivers may be. The Susquehanna offers the most splendid 
inducements to the theorist. Its head waters lie so near the smaller lakes of New 
York, which might easily be connected with the great lakes, that any one can see 
what a grand commercial avenue it could be made. If its own waters, by judi- 
cious conservation, should be found insufficient for the use of vessels, an ample 
supply could be had from the lakes, which would be tapped. Again, the Sus- 
quehanna could be wedded to the waters flowing to the Gulf by the route pro- 
posed by General Harry White, or by some other way which a survey would 
discover to be feasible. Any who have traversed the line of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad will doubtless know how readily the waters of the Juniata and Cone- 
baugh could be united, the former leading to the Susquehanna, and the latter to 
the Allegheny by way of the Kiskeminitas. 
Again, the Allegheny, with its great volume could easily be made a connect- 
ing link between the Ohio and the great lakes, first by tapping Chautauqua Lake 
to mingle with its head waters, and then by uniting Chautauqua with Erie by a 
canal of eight or ten miles in length. This could be made one of the most 
magnificent water ways in the country, and would bea great avenue for com- 
merce. 
There are several other schemes besides the one mentioned for joining the 
Atlantic with the Gulf waters. One contemplates a union of the head waters of 
the Youghiogheny and the Potomac, another the connection of the Monongahela 
with another branch of the same stream, another a junction of the Kanawha 
with headers flowing into the Atlantic. All of these schemes look to the grand 
desideratum of uniting the navigation of the western rivers with that of the 
Atlantic Ocean. Of course, before this is done, or before such a brilliant inter- 
marriage of rivers could be made to bear fruit, the Ohio, at least, if not the 
Mississippi, would have to be improved, so thatit could be utilized at other times 
than when the spring freshets, the summer solstice, or the summer equinox, 
furnish a sufficient supply of water to float a flatboat laden with coal. 
Going west to the Mississippi, examination of its northern course shows how 
readily, in a day of great engineering, that Father of Waters might be connected 
with the greatest lake in the world, thus completing a grand avenue for commerce 
between the North Atlantic and the vast agricultural regions of the South and 
West. West of the Mississippi the powerful mind wiil not lack for similar food 
for speculation in tracing the possibilities of uniting the waters of the Missouri, 
